Charitable giving with earned and windfall money: behavioral and ERP responses to donation-risk information

Charitable giving depends both on how money is acquired and on expectations about its eventual use. However, it remains unclear how monetary source shapes the evaluation of donation-risk information after a donation decision. Twenty-six participants made repeated donation decisions using earned and windfall money while electroencephalography was recorded. After each choice, a cue indicated a 70 % probability of allocation to either a lower-credibility charity (high risk) or a higher-credibility charity (low risk). One decision and its associated allocation rule were implemented at the end of the experiment. Participants donated more from windfall than earned money and reported greater regret and lower satisfaction after high-risk than low-risk cues. Mixed-effects analysis also showed lower next-trial donations following high-risk cues. Windfall money was associated with less positive frontocentral mean voltage within the feedback-related negativity (FRN) interval, whereas low-risk information elicited a larger P3. The predicted monetary-source-by-risk interaction was not supported, and Bayesian comparisons favored the zero-interaction model over the specified alternative. These findings show that monetary acquisition context and prospective allocation information both matter for charitable giving and its neural evaluation. They extend research on donation-related feedback by demonstrating behavioral adjustment to consequential risk information before the recipient and the realized charitable outcome are known.